Everyone uses it in one way or another:

• Explicit, well-documented project history.
• Clean, tidy, self-contained projects. Satisfying. Sparks joy.
• Ease of revision, experimentation and/or recovery from error.
• Collaboration, sharing, & reproducible research.

• Writing papers & managing projects (alone or collaboratively).
• Writing lectures and talks.
• Sharing: teaching material, code, data, papers…
• Writing/maintaining software.

Git

• A ‘distributed’ version control system

Git

• A ‘distributed’ version control system

Git

• A ‘distributed’ version control system
• Manages the evolution of a set of files—a repository (‘repo’)—in a sensible, flexible way
• Takes ‘snapshots’ of a project when you tell it to, and stores it alongside your informative description of that snapshot
• Kind of in the vein of Word’s ‘track changes’ + Dropbox
• Can use via command line or friendly apps, like GitHub Desktop
• n.b. A ‘repository’ is just a folder on your computer that you’ve told Git to keep an eye on

Keywords: commit your changes, push to the remote repo.

Setting up a new project:

• Create a new local repository using GitHub Desktop
• Add whatever files you like to the repository, as you would for any other project.

Day-to-day:

• Make some changes anywhere in your project
• commit those changes, with some helpful descriptive comments
• push those changes to the remote repository
• less frequently: revert changes, use branches

Setting up a new project:

• Create a new local repository using GitHub Desktop
• Add whatever files you like to the respository, as you would for any other project.

Day-to-day:

• Make some changes anywhere in your project
• commit those changes, with some helpful comments
• push those changes to the remote repository
• less frequently: revert changes, use branches

Let’s do it!

1. Create a GitHub account
2. Download Github Desktop here
3. Create a new ‘public’ repository via Github Desktop
4. Open the repository (folder) on your computer, and add some files to it
5. Commit those changes, including a helpful ‘summary’ message and ‘description’
6. Push those changes to the remote repository. The first time you do so, you’ll need to ‘publish’ the repository.

Keywords: pull any new changes, commit your changes, push to the remote repo.

Two forms:

• You & collaborators have full access rights (new skills: cloning & fetching/pulling)
• You and/or collaborators do not have full rights (new skills: forking, cloning, fetching/pulling, pull requests)

Two forms:

• You & collaborators have full access rights (new skills: cloning & pulling)
• You and/or collaborators do not have full rights (new skills: forking, cloning, pulling, pull requests)

Setting up a new project:

If you’re leading the charge:

• Create a new local repository using GitHub Desktop
• Add whatever files you like to the respository, as you would for any other project.
• Add your buddies to the remote repo on GitHub, so they can do what they like to it too

Setting up a new project:

If someone else is leading the charge:

• Clone their remote repository from GitHub, via GitHub Desktop
• That’s it. Use it like you would your own repo.

Day-to-day:

• Fetch/pull any new changes from the remote repository
• Make some changes to files in your local repository
• Commit those changes, with helpful comments
• Push those changes to the remote repository
• less frequently: resolve conflicts
• Actually now I’m here it’s exactly the same as solo, but for the occassional conflict

Day-to-day:

• Fetch/pull any new changes from the remote repository
• Make some changes in your local repository
• Commit those changes, with helpful comments
• Push those changes to the remote repository
• less frequently: resolve conflicts
• Actually now I’m here it’s exactly the same as solo, but for the occassional conflict

Let’s do it!